The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Friday, August 30, 2013

Read the article in Italiano (translated by Yehudit Weisz, edited by Angelo Pezzana)
Read the article in French (translated by Danilette)Read the article in Spanish(translated by Shula Hamilton)

The drums of war are becoming ever louder; louder and closer. With passing hour, the Middle East inches closer to the moment of truth, when the masks will be removed, with the American attack on Asad. As of this writing, on Wednesday morning, August 28, 2013, the Arabic media are all concentrating on only one thing: the American attack on Syria, which is expected to take place within the next few days.
At this point, the Arabs and Muslims have honed their positions and clarified their attitudes, because the penetrating questions can no longer be avoided: do you support the attack on Syria, an Arab country with a Muslim majority, or object to it? Do you support Asad or the Americans? Would the Middle East be better off if Asad falls or not? Who would benefit from such an attack?
Many Arab spokesmen mention a similar attack ten and a half years ago on Saddam, another "president of mass destruction", "the Arab's liaison officer to Paradise", who was sent to the garbage heap of history in March 2003, but not before he brought upon himself and his surroundings untolled suffering. Ironically, Bashar al-Asad objected to the attack on Saddam then, because he understood that foreign intervention in the Middle East cannot have good results. Bashar may even have feared that the day might come when he himself would stand before a Western firing squad.
The comparison to the Iraqi events brings to mind the chaos that occurred in Iraq after Saddam was eliminated as well. Suicide terror that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people until now, unending conflicts between tribes, jihad organizations, militias and various ethnic sects and groups, as a result of which, Iraq has disintegrated and sunk into a swamp of blood, fire and tears.
The questions that are discussed in the Arab media regarding the anticipated attack are great in scope and important:

Will Asad survive the attack? Most of the spokesmen relate their answer to the sort of attack, its breadth and its duration: if the attack is short, focused and not drastic, then it can be assumed that Asad will survive and continue to slaughter his people by conventional means, which have caused the death of more than a hundred thousand Syrians, since the hypocritical Western world accepts these means.

On the other hand, if the attack is over a wide area, includes military and civilian targets and continues for a long time, then there is only a small chance that Asad will survive, because his army has been weakened, Hizb'Allah will take a beating and the rebel militias will do to him what the Libyan tribes did to Qadhaffi.

Will the Syrian army and the ruling group continue to be loyal to Asad, who brought this attack upon them? We can assume that there will be more defections among both the army and civilians, but this is not what would end Asad's era in power, because he can fill the slots of the defectors with other murderers.

Will the attack be limited to military targets or will it include civilian targets and civilian and economic infrastructure? Most of the Arab spokesmen tend to believe that the attack will focus - at least in the first phase - on military targets, and if the impression is created that Asad is beginning to turn defeat into victory, the attack will likely continue and widen to include governmental targets.

What will be the reaction of Asad's friends, Russia and Iran? These countries have already cautioned that they will not remain passive. Russia apparently will not respond with direct military action in order to prevent a deterioration into war between itself and the United States. Iran - on the other hand - might escalate the tension in the Gulf, and perhaps even initiate terror attacks in some oil facilities. This might cause a shock in the oil market, that would be expressed in higher prices of oil in the world.

Will Asad try to take revenge on the United States by attacking Israel? This may be, and Israel must be prepared. Moreover, there is a significant chance for an increase in attacks against United States embassies and American military installations throughout the world in revenge for the action in Syria.

Will Asad use weapons of mass destruction against Israel? We can assume that he will not, because Israel would aim its missiles at Assad's neck, to decapitate him.

In the era after Asad, will Syria disintegrate like Iraq did? At any rate, Syria already does not function as a united country: the Kurds in the northeast of the country now call their section "Western Kurdistan", and this area has generally enjoyed peace and quiet during the past two years, despite a few clashes between the Turks and the jihadists who try to enlist them against Asad.

Will Asad take revenge against its neighbors, Turkey and Jordan, for actively supporting the rebels? Maybe, if, in his final hour he launches his entire stock of missiles to take the maximum number of enemies and rivals to Hell along with him. This scenario is not totally illogical.

In the Arab world, when an attack such as the anticipated one occurs, it is accompanied by deep questions regarding the entire region: Why can't we - the Arabs and the Muslims - deal with our conflicts by ourselves? Why do we need Western forces, who are heretics, to rescue us from ourselves? Why is the job of the Arab League always to invite NATO forces to do our dirty work for us, dirty work that the Arab nation should do, but is incapable of doing?
Similar questions arose in Egypt in September 1994, about the United Nations Conference of Population and Development organization (UNPD), which met in Cairo and dealt with - among other things - women's rights. The positions of the participants in the conference were polar opposites: the Muslim representatives objected to broadening the rights of women while the representatives of Western countries tried with all of their strength to promote these rights. Hiba Saad a-Din, the editor of "Sawt al-Nisa" ("The Woman's Voice") in the newspaper "al-Shab", the organ of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, brought up an embarrassing question: "Why precisely are the enemies of Islam (meaning the Western, Christian, heretical countries) those who fight for the rights of Muslim women? Shouldn't our sheikhs and the imams defend the rights of our women more than those who want to undermine the Islamic world?
These days, with the anticipated attack on Syria in the background, Arab spokesmen raise similar questions: why is it precisley the Americans, who support Israel and enemies of the Arabs, the ones who are willing to go to war and invest their wealth and their blood to rescue us, the Arabs and the Muslims, from the grip of our bloodthirsty dictators who murder us indiscriminately? On the other hand, there are those who attack the United States for trying to remove Asad from power, because if Asad falls, don't the Americans understand that the al-Qaeda type jihad organizations will take his place and turn life in what remains of Syria into a Hell on Earth? And perhaps the Americans want to turn Syria into Afghanistan or Iraq under the camouflage of concern for Syrian citizens? And what is Israel's role in pushing the Americans to eliminate Syria and the threat that it poses for Israel? What will Syria be like after the fall of Asad? Will it become an American satellite? Or perhaps another territory on which to establish Israeli settlements? One of al-Jazeera's spokesmen said, with a sigh: "May G-d have mercy on the Golan", meaning that the Golan is lost to Syria because now we will be negotiating over the the remainder of Syrian territory after the United States and Israel have occupied it.
The anticipated attack also raises questions that express deep concern about the fate of the helpless Syrian citizens: will an attack on chemical weapons stockpiles create an environmental disaster for everyone who lives nearby, causing many fatalities among them? Will the intelligence agencies of the United States and its supporters really know what the best targets are and what is not a suitable target? And on the other hand, does anyone really think that Asad has left all of his chemical weapons in their usual locations? To anyone who has any sense at all, it is clear that in recent days, since it was publicly declared that the United States may attack Syria, Asad's army has been scattering all of the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that he has, so what and where will the Americans attack? And perhaps Asad has already secreted his chemical weapons into Iraq, to his good friend Nuri al-Malaki, the Shi'ite prime minister of Iraq, just like Saddam secreted his chemical and biological weapons into Syria before the coalition's attack in March 2003?
Will the Asad regime allow the UN inspectors to leave Syria before the attack or will it perhaps it will delay their exit and even use them as human shields to safeguard the chemical weapons stockpiles that remain in Syria?
The words of official Syrian spokesmen are widely quoted again and again in Arabic media saying that if Syria is attacked, Tel Aviv will suffer. Some Arab analysts claim that these words show that "the strongest muscle in an Arab ruler's body is his tongue", meaning that they are all talk, not deeds, and threats to Israel are empty threats. They also quote the words of some Israeli politicians who constantly claim that it is better for Israel to leave the weakened Asad in place, rather than to deal with al-Qaeda on the border, who would not honor any agreement that Asad signed with Israel. Other Arab analysts do not hide their hopes that Asad will indeed attack Tel Aviv, to prove that Israel is not invincible and the Hi tech Israeli bleeding hearts, who place their trust in sophisticated weapons systems, are no better than the "low-tech" Arabs, who, which has determined fighters who are faithful to their Arab motherland and their historic goal to eliminate Israel.

On the other hand, reports are beginning to come in that Asad flew to Iran Tuesday night "for consultation". If these reports are correct and he indeed left Syria, will he return to it before the attack breaks out or will he perhaps choose to manage Syria's defense from afar, from a more secure place? And if his forces discover that he has abandoned them will they continue to fight for him? And what will the Alawites do if and when they discover that their president has fled? Will they declare a state in the an-Nusayriyah Mountains in western Syria, where their motherland is located?
But the greatest indicator of pressure in the Arab world is - just as it is with us - the money market. In recent days the Arab money market has been behaving frenetically, and is characterized by periods of pressure and it is not clear how it will be resolved. And since the main source of the pressure is centered in the Gulf, principally because of the nearby Iranian neighbor to their east, these countries' markets are also clearly in the red. They are unfortunate, but not suffering too badly: the rising price of oil will compensate them for the rising cost of shares...

Dr. Mordechai Kedar(Mordechai.Kedar@biu.ac.il) is an Israeli scholar of Arabic and Islam, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. He specializes in Islamic ideology and movements, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena.

Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav with permission from the author.

Source: The article is published in the framework of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. Also published in Makor Rishon, a Hebrew weekly newspaper.

by Jonathan S. Tobin Israelis were lining up for gas masks and dusting
out their air raid shelters today as the prospect of U.S. attacks on
Syrian targets this week provoked threats of retaliation against the
Jewish state. That Israelis as well as their neighbors seem to take the
idea that they should be attacked because Bashar Assad used chemical
weapons against Syrian civilians as nothing out of the ordinary. This is
par for the course in the Middle East where Israelis have always served
as the all-purpose scapegoats for everything that happens. But though
Americans may not be quite as jaded to this sort of thing, some in our
nation’s capital also seem to subscribe in some ways to the Arab world’s
conspiratorial view of Israel. That was evident in a Politico story published last night that pondered why it was that the so-called “Israel lobby” was “silent on Syria.”

The assumption behind the story and the headline seems to be that
anything that happens in the Middle East or any foreign policy
initiative undertaken by the United States has to be in some way the
result of machinations by supporters of Israel even if the conflict in
question is one on which they have no rooting interest. That Jerusalem
doesn’t have a favorite in a fight between a genocidal maniac dictator
and an opposition that is heavily infiltrated by people related to Al
Qaeda is a given. But the fact that backers of Israel are as divided
about what the U.S. should do about Assad’s atrocities as the rest of
the country is seen as somehow anomalous. But, like the Iraq War, which
was, contrary to the anti-Semitic conspiracy mongers, not fought at
Israel’s behest, there seems to be no stopping those who subscribe to
the Walt-Mearsheimer “Israel Lobby” thesis that claims the Jewish state
and the wall-to-wall bipartisan coalition that supports it somehow
manipulates U.S. foreign policy against the best interests of the
nation. However, in this case the slow march of the Obama administration
to act on Syria gives the lie to the idea that Israel is the tail that
wags the dog in Washington.

Apparently for the editors of Politico, the lack of a concerted
effort on the part of pro-Israel groups either in favor of or against
intervention in Syria is like the dog that doesn’t bark in Conan Doyle’s
The Hound of the Baskervilles. If you start thinking in
Walt-Mearsheimer terms in which everything revolves around Israel, then
the absence of pro-Israel groups in a debate must seem suspicious or at
least odd. But there’s nothing unusual about neutrality on Syria,
especially since the Jewish state has good reason to distrust both sides
in the civil war and will probably suffer if the U.S. attacks.

It may be a shock to some to think that Israel’s friends don’t have a
vested interest in every issue on the table. Groups like AIPAC do speak
out on topics like aid to Egypt (which is directly related to
maintenance of the peace treaty with Israel) or strengthening ties to
moderate Arab nations like Jordan. But Israel doesn’t directly figure in
calculations about Syria or most questions between the U.S. and Arab
and Muslim nations.

If anything, events of the last few years in which Arab Spring
protests and rebellions have debunked the long-cherished view of
Israel’s critics that holds that the conflict with the Palestinians is
the central issue around which all conflicts revolve in the Middle East.
That’s a concept that those heavily influenced by the Walt-Mearsheimer
canard have a tough time wrapping their brains around. But those willing
to subscribe to conspiracy theories in which Israel provides the
explanation for every mystery and misery on the planet now find
themselves searching for an Israel angle about Syria. But other than the
fact that Israel will be blamed for the outcome no matter what happens,
there is none. Conspiracy theorists and their journalistic enablers
need to move on.Jonathan S. Tobin Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/08/28/syria-and-israel-lobby-conspiracy-theories/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Officials in Israel
sounded convinced on Wednesday that the American momentum on attacking
Syria has not stopped, and the hullabaloo on the diplomatic and
international front will not change the strategic decision made in
Washington to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime for using
chemical weapons.

In the meantime, the
Americans are continuing to formulate a dual coalition to support a
military operation, globally and regionally.

Members of the global
coalition, as of Wednesday, include Great Britain, Canada, France, and
to a lesser extent Germany and NATO. Regionally, the coalition is
comprised of Gulf states, Jordan, Turkey, and unofficially Israel as
well.

Only a small number of
these countries will actually take part in the attack, which according
to reports is expected to last two days and focus on dozens of targets.
Israel surely will not be among those participating in the offensive,
but considering its intimate intelligence and operational familiarity
with the Syrian arena it is reasonable to assume it will have an
integral role in the preparations for the attack and its execution (even
if it does not select the targets itself).

Israeli officials
believe that the U.S. administration will seek a punitive operation on a
limited scale, but which comes with a stick: If Syria uses
unconventional weapons again the U.S. will attack it again, on a larger
scale. Considering this, Israel believes Syria will want to end this
affair as quickly as possible.

From the perspective of
the Assad regime, this is a "necessary punishment" that it must take,
thus the firm Israeli assessment that the chances of a Syrian response
against the Jewish state are close to nil. As of Wednesday there was not
one source, official or indication that pointed to any other
assessment, but the political echelon decided nevertheless to continue
warning Syria against thinking about deflecting fire toward Israel.

Along with the
deterrence efforts, the defense establishment also tried to calm the
nation, which has unreasonably begun to panic as if we are on the brink
of a horrible war. Even if the stresses of standing in line at the gas
mask distribution centers are familiar from the days of the First Gulf
War with Iraq, the hysteria we have witnessed is unnecessary and of no
benefit.

If Israel believed that
there was even a miniscule chance that the country would be targeted
with chemical weapons, the army's Homefront Command would ask people to
equip themselves with gas masks. The preparations we are seeing --
moving Iron Dome batteries to the north, calling up a limited number of
reservists in the air-defense corps, intelligence gathering and getting
the homefront ready -- are intended to prevent any surprises and prepare
for any developments; they are not an indication of information being
hidden from the public.

It is reasonable that stress
levels will rise sharply when the attack begins, when the nerves of all
those involved will also be put to the test -- in Israel and around the
world. The arena is not lacking for elements that will seek to join the
fray, which is why we will also see increased alertness along the
Lebanese border, Sinai and Gaza. But the Israeli interest continues to
be focusing its efforts in one central direction: not to be dragged into
the fighting, and to let the Americans run the show.

The U.S. Air Force has just
completed a review of the ballistic missile threats to the U.S.: China
is building more ballistic missiles than anyone – and faster. By 2015,
Iran's and North Korea's long-range missiles will be able to reach the
United States.

The Israeli Air Force, on June 7, 1981, carried out Operation Opera,
in which F-16s flew hundreds of miles and successfully destroyed the
nuclear facility in Osirak, Iraq -- the difficulty of the task only
increased by the absence of laser-guided technology and the distance the
jets had to fly.

When, shortly after, President Ronald Reagan was asked whether a
National Security Council emergency session should be called to "assess
what to do," he replied, "Well, boys will be boys," and calmly proceeded
to the presidential helicopter. No NSC session was convened.

This was a time when Americans cheered when the "tough guys" -- John
Wayne, Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood, Keefer Sutherland, Bruce Willis,
Sean Connery -- defended the "good guys."

In that 1981 raid, the Israelis, the good guys, God bless them,
defended not only Israel, but all of us. Thirty years later, are we
willing to defend ourselves?

Or do too many Americans, if we use military force, see our country as a "bully"?

Franz Fanon, a cult figure in the 1960s and the Marxist author of the
book, "The Wretched of the Earth" -- favorably mentioned by our
nation's President in "Dreams From My Father" and still widely read on
American college campuses -- apparently saw America as an imperialist
nation and our military as an instrument of oppression.

In addition, according to Wilmington News Journal on October
24, 2001, the top Democratic lawmaker on foreign policy, Senator Joe
Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee argued to
the Council on Foreign Relations that the United States would be
perceived as a "high tech bully" if, in Afghanistan, we did not put
troops on the ground and fought only using air power -- as if the United
States, or anyone else, should fight according to some notion of
"fairness" that requires making your own troops as vulnerable as your
adversaries'.

Others credit the U.S. for creating the very terrorism we worry about. The Washington Blog of October 19th,
2012 details these claims, including Richard Clarke, for instance,
formerly the cyber advisor on the National Security Council, claiming
that as a result of our liberation of Afghanistan, the U.S. was actually
creating thousands more terrorists.

In a July 19, 2004 letter to the author, Congressman Chris Shays
explained that Clarke, then a National Security Council aide, told his
House Terrorism subcommittee in June 2000 that there were "so many
terrorist threats to America that it made no sense prioritizing them."
When asked whether he could advise the Congress how best to spend
homeland security funding, wrote Shays, Clarke said, "No."

Others, including former including former President William Clinton,
asserted that the creation of a Palestinian state would "take about half
the impetus in the whole world, not just the region…for terror away. It
would have more impact than anything else that could be done."

As the esteemed Middle East expert Shoshana Bryen countered (in JINSA
Report #1030, October 8, 2010, which examined President Clinton's
claim), "Blaming the existence of Israel for half the world's terrorism
-- not Arab rejection of the UN process under which Israel declared
itself independent -- is abhorrent."

The Strategic Defense Initiative Meets the Nuclear Freeze

With the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980 -- on an
explicit platform of "peace through strength" -- the notion that the
U.S. military was an instrument of bullying was rejected by a large
majority of the electorate.

Reagan set out to accomplish three key strategic objectives:
modernize U.S. nuclear forces; begin to research, develop and eventually
build missile defenses, and simultaneously seek major reductions in
nuclear weapons to build a more stable strategic environment.

But beyond these policies lay a further goal: to undermine, and eventually bring down, the former Soviet Union.

Others were aghast at the administration's plans. Just days after the President's inauguration, Johnny Apple wrote in the New York Times
on February 5, 1981: "Some Soviet officials are evidently worried by
the possibility that Mr. Reagan will find himself imprisoned by his own
philosophy."

The hostility of the "arms control community" to the administration
coalesced around support for the Soviet initiative called the "Nuclear
Freeze." The Soviet nuclear arms were modernized, but the US arsenal was
approaching block obsolescence. A "freeze" would lock in a Soviet
advantage in the "correlation of power."

By the spring of 1983, hostility to Reagan's policies had reached a peak, but three events changed all that.

First, the administration secured Congressional and NATO approval for
the deployment of U.S. Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces in Europe to
counter the Soviet SS-20 missiles. Second, on March 23, President Ronald
Reagan proposed that the U.S. build the Strategic Defense Initiative
[SDI].

And third, in May, Congress approved the deployment of the first
fleet of Peacekeeper [MX] ICBMs. Thus, in just a matter of months,
Reagan's policy of "peace through strength" was fully endorsed by the
U.S. Congress and our NATO allies.

The reaction of his critics was nonetheless angry and swift.

Senator Edward Kennedy, on March 24, just one day after the SDI
speech, called Reagan's remarks a "misleading Red-Scare tactic" and a
"reckless Star Wars scheme," as reported in Space News on March 25, 1983.

A few months later, on June 4, after the Peacekeeper missile
deployment was approved, Senator Kennedy continued in the same vein,
arguing that "a nuclear freeze" was necessary because "we cannot let the
administration modernize our forces with the most threatening of
weapons" according to a press statement released by the Senators office.

The next spring, the leadership of the Union of Concerned Scientists
prepared a lengthy attack on Reagan's defense policies. In the April 24,
1984 New York Review of Books entitled "Reagan's Star Wars",
they predicted that U.S. missile defense policies would undermine
strategic stability, cause a worsening arms race, end any possibility of
arms control and make conflict with the USSR more likely.

President Reagan, however, stuck to his plan. Together he and
subsequent presidents successfully moved forward on all three strategic
initiatives. The U.S. adopted the INF, START I, Moscow and New START
Treaties, which cumulatively reduced U.S. and Russian deployed nuclear
weapons by over 20,000 warheads. And the U.S. simultaneously modernized
its fleet of nuclear forces, including the B1, B2 and B52 bombers; the
Peacekeeper and Minuteman III ICBM, and the Trident submarine and its
contingent of D-5 missiles. They still largely form the bedrock of the
U.S. nuclear deterrent.

As for missile defense, the U.S. laid the groundwork for the eventual
deployment of what is today over 1,000 American missile defense
interceptors -- first by establishing research, development and testing;
then by adopting a law requiring the U.S. to be defended from ballistic
missiles; then by getting rid of the ABM treaty, which had been the
major impediment to missile defenses; and finally by beginning the task
of actually building a global, layered missile defense architecture.

Of course, the policy of peace through strength worked as the Soviet empire imploded.

Missile Defense in the Age of Jihad

Today missile defenses are supported by an overwhelming number of
Americans -- upwards of 84-88% in both a July 2007 and June 2009 poll by
Opinion Research Corporation, according to the Missile Defense Advocacy
Alliance. Despite such strong public support, however, the task of
fielding missile defenses has not been easy.

For close to twenty years after Reagan announced his goal of building
major missile defenses to protect the United States and its allies, the
U.S. was largely restricted to doing only research.

The restrictions of the ABM treaty, or the 1972 Treaty on the
Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile systems, prohibited developing or
testing national missile defenses.

The U.S. could put nothing in the field to defend its population as a whole.

The idea during much of the Cold War was that if the U.S. and the
Soviets were both totally vulnerable to nuclear missiles, no one would
be tempted to use them in a crisis. Left unexamined was whether such a
strategy would also work with any newly-nuclear-armed rogue states and
their terrorist affiliates that we might face in the future.

In 2001-2, President George W. Bush jettisoned the ABM treaty, first
giving notice that we intended to leave the treaty, then formally
leaving it. He secured Congressional support for building, over time,
what was characterized as a "global, layered missile defense," including
for the American homeland -- a task that still requires much to be
accomplished.

What the effort faced, and still faces, is political barriers.
Space-based systems, for instance, were taken "off the table." As
reported by the Monterey Institute (April 15, 2002) and Global Issues
on May 13, 2001, space was "pristine," not to be "weaponized" -- but
does anyone imagine that Russians or the Chinese got this message?

Further, because of inertia from the Clinton administration, a
ground-based system of interceptors became the initial "program of
record" with which to defend the United States.

The ground-based system uses a non-explosive "kill vehicle," which,
in space, literally "runs into" the adversary's warhead -- a maneuver
called "hit to kill." The U.S. has succeeded in doing this seven times
against intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and 60 times against all
classes of missiles. Just recently, however, when a battery did not
work, a test of the national missile defense system failed.

Some missile defense opponents, quick to react, called for all tests of the system to stop.

For example, Yousaf Butt, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, called, in a July 30, 2013 letter to the New York Times, for the elimination of funding for the mid-course defense of United States territory.

He asserted that rogue states would not strike the US with weapons
delivered by missiles that such delivery by missiles was simply the
means the Soviets and Americans had agreed to use during the Cold War
but would not be used by rogue states.

Many of the most prominent missile defense critics today were the
same as those who had ridiculed original missile defense proposals in
1983 as "Star Wars" as some kind of movie fantasy.

Even before any missile defense element was first tested, they had
opposed building defenses for America, and as late as 2001, when the US
finally jettisoned the ABM Treaty, still had not changed their minds.

Missile defense, they said, could not technologically work. They also
still warned that getting rid of the ABM treaty -- which prohibited
national missile defenses -- would not only undo any chance for nuclear
arms control, but would also provoke a war with the Soviets. [Much of
this flawed analysis is contained in the lengthy essay referenced above
published by the New York Review of Books.]

Contrary to their fears, however, nuclear weapons in Russia and the
United States have actually been collectively reduced by over 15,000
since 2002, when the ABM treaty was junked and the U.S and its allies
starting building missile defenses in earnest.

Undaunted, and faced with such facts, critics go back to the false claim that the technology does not work.

When faced with information that 60 of 74 tests were successful -- an
80% success rate -- they claim -- as William Broad reported in the New York Times on June 9, 2000 – "the tests are obviously rigged."

The New Debate: Technology or Politics?

The debate over how to proceed with missile defense is therefore not as simple as it seems.At the center are two problems. The first is a technology problem, which can be solved.But the second, the political problem, continues to be tougher.

Critics claim that in the vacuum of space, in the mid-course, a
missile cannot distinguish between the real warhead and lighter decoys
fired along with it to "confuse" a possible interceptor. The critics
claim, therefore, that no intercept is possible.

In the first 3-5 minutes of flight, however, the warhead and decoys
remain intact, as part of the missile. Thus, if it were intercepted
early, there would be no decoys to worry about. This approach, however,
requires an extremely fast interceptor and a favorable geographic
setting. Although it can be performed from land, sea or space, the U.S.
does not yet have a boost-phase intercept capability in the field to
intercept warheads early in flight. Those technologies, which were being
researched and tested, were eliminated in 2009.

That particular technological problem, however, can be solved. As
former Missile Defense Director USAF Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Trey Obering
recently explained in a July 23, 2013 Foreign Policy Initiative Forum in
Washington, D.C., in two mid-course tests, the kill-vehicle was
able to distinguish between the warhead and decoys. Funding for that
research work, unfortunately, was also eliminated in 2009. We of course
still need to do more tests. Critics, however, will not support more
tests of boost-phase technology.

Although today our sea-based missile defenses -- projected to be
included on nearly 38 Navy Aegis combat ships -- are used primarily for
the defense of our forces and friends overseas, they could easily be
used for the homeland as well. They just have never been tested for the
boost-stage, or early-intercept, of long-range missiles. Unfortunately,
in 2009, funding was also eliminated for boost-phase research and
development, including funding for the Airborne Laser (ABL), the
multiple-kill-vehicle (MKV), a system with a lot of kill-vehicles able
to go after the warheads and decoys simultaneously, as well as the KEI,
or kinetic-energy interceptor, a extremely fast two-stage missile
capable of getting to its target quickly.

At the moment, opponents in Congress can block space research. In fact they will not even support a research study
of possible space capabilities, let alone build defenses that would be
the best means of defending against missile threats, including those
that use decoys. From space, you can be right over the target all the
time, with an ability to see a launch almost instantly, and shoot and
destroy the threatening missile.

The protection we have at present consists of 30 deployed
ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California, and Aegis Navy
cruisers with missile-interceptors aboard, able to defend America if the
ships, when steaming, are near the continental United States (CONUS).

The U.S. urgently needs complimentary capabilities to defend against
ocean-borne threats from freighters or submarines, but even though such
defenses are under consideration, no one has yet decided to build them.

The House version of the defense bill explicitly calls for a new East
Coast missile defense site, which could both protect against long-range
missile threats as well as missile launches from maritime regions
around the United States.

One can only ask: Why are more robust U.S. defenses not being put in place to defend America at home?

Lessons for the Hunt for Red October

At the end of the Cold War, when Congress and the George H. W. Bush
administration were debating how to proceed with missile defenses, The Hunt for Red October,
the Tom Clancy thriller, was speculating about the possible Soviet plan
for a first-strike against the United States; it would be able to
destroy U.S. cities and simultaneously decapitate its ability to
retaliate. This idea morphed into the worry that once the Soviet Union
broke up, an authorized, unauthorized or even unintentional launch of
Russian missiles might, in the resulting turmoil, come America's way.

GPALS [Global Protection Against Limited Strikes] and ALPS [the
Accidental Launch Protection System] were both put forward as possible
missile-defense frameworks. As former missile defense chief Hank Cooper,
now with High Frontier, explained to me, the George H. W. Bush
administration proposed a space-based and ground-based combination of
missile defenses to protect the United States, and even explored with
some senior Russian experts the idea of joint collaborative work.

Again, politics intervened, and Congressional leaders -- many opposed
to missile defense – agreed, in a compromise, to research a land-based
component while postponing any kind of space-based element far into the
future.

A year later, in 1993, the new Clinton administration announced, as
reported by the Federation of American Scientists on May 13, 1993, that
it had "Taken the 'Stars' out of Star Wars" designed to protect the
American homeland, while cutting, as well, upwards of 25-40% of the
funding for short-range missile-defense systems -- those largely
protecting our military forces and bases overseas.

Thus began an extended national debate over whether there were any
ballistic missile threats to the U.S. that even justified research
efforts to examine a national missile defense (NMD) effort. A CIA report
claimed no such threats to the U.S. were on the horizon – forgetting,
however, to mention to Congress that the report had arbitrarily excluded
from its assessment both Hawaii and Alaska.

To connect the dots accurately, Congress then mandated a new study,
conducted by a newly created "Commission on the Ballistic Missile Threat
to the United States," and it directed it to include Hawaii and Alaska.
In 1998, the Commission completed its work and released a unanimous
report concluding that a country such as Iran or North Korea could
develop a long range missile threat to the United States within five
years of a decision to do so -- much faster than previous U.S.
intelligence studies had estimated.

The report also concluded that the U.S. could not count on rogue
states undertaking an extensive missile test period; thus there would be
less warning of such developments than previously assumed. The report
also noted that previous U.S. intelligence reports were erroneous for
assuming that rogue states would develop rockets from indigenous sources
only. The report warned that cooperative help from other states, such
as Russia and China, could dramatically compress the time frame in which
threats could emerge.

Ironically, these fears were realized within weeks of the release of
the Commission report, when in a surprise, North Korea test-launched a
long-range rocket. While the third stage motor failed, it was determined
that if all rocket motor stages had worked, the missile would have had
the capability to reach the United States.

That event, in turn, once again led to a fierce debate in Congress
whether to accelerate development of a national missile defense and
actually make a deployment decision, yes or no.

At the end of the Clinton administration, the President decided "No"
-- not to move toward deployment, and not to test a key interceptor.

His decision came despite overwhelmingly bipartisan support for the
1999 National Missile Defense Act, which called for the deployment of a
national missile defense (NMD) "as soon as technologically possible."

The National Missile Defense Act had passed the Senate 97-3, and the
House 317-105. Senator Thad Cochran, Senator Ted Stevens and Congressman
Curt Weldon, were the heroes who secured its passage. Although the bill
was signed into law, President Clinton said about testing, "Not today."

Beyond Mutual Assured Destruction [MAD]

It was two years later, on December 18, 2002, when the new George W.
Bush administration formally jettisoned the ABM Treaty, which had
prevented deployment of missile defenses. That came while the
administration also put forward a plan to deploy the initial stage of a
national missile defense by the end of its first term.

During the Cold War, the mutual vulnerability of both superpowers to
one another's missile strikes was often described as "MAD" or Mutual
Assured Destruction -- a doctrine that had been enshrined by the 1972
ABM Treaty ban on missile defenses.

By the end of the Cold War, however, U.S. deterrent policy had
evolved to a doctrine of holding our adversaries' military weaponry at
risk, including their nuclear forces, to prevent them from remaining in a
sanctuary from which to fire -- cost-free and at will -- against the
United States and its allies.

By the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2008, some 1,200
American missile defense interceptors of all kinds were deployed, were
scheduled soon to be deployed, or built worldwide. It was finally hoped
that America would not need to embrace any aspect of MAD much longer.
Instead of avenging a missile strike on the United States, we could
simply intercept the warhead and destroy it. In a crisis, an American
president would have the extra diplomatic maneuverability to avoid being
blackmailed or terrorized by a hostile nation aiming missiles --
especially those launched secretly -- at U.S. cities.

Or so we thought.

Given the absence of an effective national missile defense,
retaliatory deterrence alone would still remain the basis for U.S.
safety. But that policy assumes that the adversaries are rational.

However, can the mullahs in Iran or the Kim family in North Korea --
or their terrorist affiliates -- be relied upon to be perpetually
rational?

Even though we have the protection of the initial 30 interceptors --
planned to be increased to 44 -- in Alaska and California, everyone
understands that the U.S. national missile defenses need more work.

The mullahs in Iran may love death more than life, and their allies
in Pyongyang may again look -- surreptitiously -- for a means of
striking the United States. But missile defense would protect against
these rogue states, and could prevent the U.S. from being blackmailed.

Adversaries of the U.S. and its allies get to vote, too, and their threats will grow. One cannot stand still.

The fiercest critics of missile defense appear simply not to like
defenses. They see them as giving America too much power, what Bill
Keller, the New York Times op-ed columnist, later to become its
Executive Editor, described as America being able to exercise an
"unfettered self-interest" (November 25, 2001).

In 2009, despite widespread progress in building missile defenses for
the past decade, and even as missile threats proliferated, the Center
for American Progress, for instance, proposed cutting our missile
defense budgets from $9 billion to $2 billion, a dramatic cut which
would have all but killed the program and its 18 key elements.

At the end of the day, the administration cut funding by $2 billion
(from $9 billion to $7 billion annually), but as we have seen, these
cuts did serious damage to missile defenses.

As Senator Kelly Ayotte, a key member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, recently noted, (July 23, 2013, Foreign Policy Initiative
Forum) overall NMD funding has been cut 50% since 2009. And despite the
U.S. facing even greater missile threats, plans for testing have
suffered as well.

Opponents of missile defense also simply do not want to go into space
even though Russia and China are doing just that. In addition, space is
the most likely theater of the next war, especially if left undefended.

Not only is space-based missile defense off-limits, but funding for
boost-phase research from the sea or land is still nowhere to be seen in
the MDA or Missile Defense Agency.

While the current 30 U.S.-based long range interceptors now deployed
provide some defense, they need to be improved. Many missile defense
critics, however, want such enhancements scrapped.

The eastern United States and the Gulf region approaches are also in
need of protection. Critics, however, say there is no need for an East
Coast defense. Although such funding for the East Coast has been
approved by the House Armed Services Committee, its Senate counterpart
has approved funds only for an environmental-impact study of new basing
possibilities.

All this potential work is easily able to be undertaken, but until it
is approved, much of the United States and its allies will remain
undefended in key, critical areas.

Emerging Threats

There are superb additional missile defense options for our protection beyond those now deployed.

Currently, for example, the U.S. is planning to put Navy interceptors
"ashore" in Romania to defend Europe against Iran. Why can't the U.S.
deploy on land the same interceptors on its own eastern seaboard? The
U.S. could then help defend against ocean-going threats, which may be
the optimum means of a surreptitious EMP (electro-magnetic pulse)
missile attack by its adversaries.

A U.S. missile defense simply assumes that the U.S has a right to protect itself because it is threatened.

Missile defense opponents, however, such as Bill Keller apparently
are uneasy about that. Another prominent critic Joe Cirincione, the head
of the Ploughshares Fund claims, "First the shield, then the sword", (Arms Control Today, April 2000), implying that US missile defenses are in reality a preparation for aggression.

Others claim that America's "chickens are coming home to roost"
(abcnews.go.com, March 13, 2008), implying that the U.S. deserves the
terrorist attacks it suffers -- even if they come from missiles.

On April 12, 2013, the New York Times wrote that America's
negotiating conditions with North Korea and Iran are "too severe" --
implying that if the U.S. would only stop building defenses, its
adversaries would stop building missiles, too.

A corollary belief is that "they" -- North Korea and Iran, for
example, -- want only "regime survival." What is not asked is: "Survival
to do what?"

For example, this view was most recently expressed by Professor Graham Allison of Harvard in the Atlantic (August 1, 2013, "Will Iran get a Bomb—or Be Bombed Itself—This Year?").
Despite evidence to the contrary, he asserts that Iran will only build a
nuclear weapon "if it thinks the regime is threatened" by the United
States or Israel.

The same excuse is reflected in Pyongyang's oft-repeated refrain that
it is building a nuclear capability because of America's "hostile
policy." As just about any U.S. action is described by Iran and North
Korea as "hostile," this reasoning implies that no one should be armed
except Tehran and Pyongyang.

The Arms Control Association, apparently angry about the U.S. ending
its adherence to the ABM Treaty, wrote in a 2001 editorial: "The U.S.
does not play nice in the international sandbox."

Yousaf Butt, in the same July 31, 2013 New York Times letter
referenced above, went so far as to conclude that U.S. deployment of
missile defenses causes rogue states to build more missiles aimed at
America -- in short, that the problem is "our fault for defending
ourselves."

Still another prominent critic from the Union of Concerned Scientists
claimed, at a May 2, 2001 press conference, "Fire, Aim, Ready" that,
"No missile defense is the best defense" -- a statement echoed at the
same press conference by Congressman Rush Holt (D) of New Jersey.

So should the U.S. just give up and adopt mutual assured destruction with North Korea, China and Iran?

Many Americans might say that is not good enough.

On July 10, 2013, the U.S. Air Force and the National Air and Space
Intelligence Center completed a major review of the ballistic missile
threats to the US mainland‎. It concluded that "China has the most
active and diverse ballistic missile development program in the world"
and is building more ballistic missiles than anyone -- and faster.

The review concludes that by 2015, both Iran's and North Korea's long-range missiles will be able to reach the United States.

One can only conclude that, deep down, many critics of missile defense want to see America not
protected. Whatever their criticisms, they keep looking for more and
more convenient excuses to camouflage an inherent bias against defending
America.

As Bill Keller of the New York Times again put it, an effective US missile defense would undermine the power of North Korea and Iran (see the Orlando Sentinel, "Dreamers, Schemers, Deceivers: Behind ABM Treaty Withdrawal", February 4, 2002).

Perhaps some other Americans are also happy to allow enemies of the
United States, such as Iran, North Korea, and their terrorist offshoots,
to hold the U.S. hostage to their demands -- whether political,
military or economic. But those Americans, despite thousands of years of
military history to the contrary, would seemingly prefer the U.S. to
succumb to blackmail rather than to exercise a natural, legitimate, and
constitutional right of self-defense.

Lessons of Iron Dome

Late last year, Israel successfully defended its homeland from hundreds of rockets launched by the terrorist group Hamas.

Israel's short-range missile defense system, Iron Dome, was built and
fielded in three years. The technology was further improved while
actually in use. 90% of the attempted intercepts were successful.

Israel's
short-range missile defense system, Iron Dome, was built and fielded in
three years. (Photo credit: Israel Defense Forces)

When one prominent opponent of U.S. missile defenses, Ted Postol of
M.I.T., claimed that at best only 15% of Hamas rockets were destroyed,
further investigation into that claim by missile defense expert Uzi
Rubin revealed that Postol's criticisms "turned out to be without
foundation, they were laughed at."

U.S. Air Force General Bernard Schriever, after a go-ahead from Air
Force Chief General Arnold "Hap" Arnold in 1958, built and deployed the
Minuteman ICBM in just four years ("A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard
Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon"). It was a remarkable achievement
that was just years earlier had been considered impossible. And now over
half a century later, the Minuteman's successor, the nuclear ICBM
Minuteman III, is still in use, with 450 deployed missiles in five
states. The ingenuity we applied during the Cold War and represented by
Schriever's success in deterrence should now be equally aimed at
building the added deterrent value of missile defenses.

It is often noted that if nuclear deterrence alone worked against the
Soviet Union for so many years, why would we need anything different
today? However, even though nuclear deterrence worked during the Cold
War with the Soviet Union, are we certain that North Korea or Iran, or
their proxies, will not try to attack us surreptitiously with missiles?

They could, for example, be launched from a freighter or submarine
off-shore, or perhaps in an EMP [electro-magnetic pulse] mode, in which a
nuclear warhead is detonated some 70-100 kilometers above the U.S. to
shut down the nation's grid and critical infrastructure?

Having the added insurance of missile defenses would be prudent.

Maybe it is time America decided it was time for our "boys to be
boys" -- in service to that constitutional requirement: "To Provide for
the Common Defense."